English Abstract

Numerical Simulation of Melt Mixing for Polymeric Materials and Evaluation of Mixing Performance

Toshihisa KAJIWARA
Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan
Nippon Gomu Kyokaishi,(2016),89(12),355-361 General Review in Japanese

Single-screw and Twin-screw extruders with mixing elements are widely used as a continuous mixing and production equipment of polymeric materials such as polymer alloys, blends, composites, etc. Melt mixing is one of the most important regions to determine the final morphology of materials, where polymers are completely melted and channel between screws and barrel is fully filled with materials so as to promote the intensive mixing. Various types of mixing elements have been empirically developed for objective materials. In recent ten years, computer simulation has been using to design of novel mixing elements according to the mixing mechanism such as distributive mixing and dispersive mixing. However it is considerably difficult how we should evaluate the performance of actual mixing in industrial applications using the simulation results due to the restriction of simulation.
In this manuscript, I would like to explain the basic theory of melt mixing and outline of numerical simulation technique. Then I introduce the representative evaluation methods of mixing performance proposed in previous studies. I also present the examples of studies about polymer blend and composite.

Keywords: Polymeric Materials, Melt Mixing, Numerical Simulation, Extruder, Distributive Mixing, Dispersive Mixing